La Donna della Finestra

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date: c. 1881 

Materials: Oil on canvas

This is one of the first two Pre-Raphaelite pictures to enter the Birmingham collection, having been bought at Rossetti's studio sale in 1883. It is a replica of an oil of 1879, itself deriving from a pastel of 1870, representing Jane Morris as the woman in Dante's 'Vita Nuova' who looks down sympathetically from her window upon the poet as he grieves for Beatrice. In William Rossetti's analysis, "Humanely she is the Lady at the window; mentally she is the Lady of Pity. This interpretation of soul and body - thissense of an equal and indefeasible reality of the thing symbolised, and of the form which conveys the symbol - are constantly to be understood as the keynote of Rossetti's aim and performance in art".